Comments on: Danger in the cloud: a proposal

By: Jeff Van Campen

Jeff Van Campen — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:08:28 +0000

This is a superb idea. I've been thinking along similar lines for some time. I was thinking that a stripped-down Ubuntu could provide the base system. I don't know if anyone has put a web-based interface on apt-get, but that could be a start. Ideally, you could do this in an iPhone-like way, so that the applications were bundled as a single package (no dependencies). I was largely inspired by this Steven Pemberton talk (in particular the bit at about routers at the end) and the type of federation that is built into StatusNet (formerly laconi.ca) and Google Wave protocol. I'd love to see something like this working. If you're thinking of starting a project, I'd love to talk more about it.

By: Brian B

Brian B — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:08:20 +0000

I think this sounds like a great idea. @Andrew, a simple backup could be built into the software. Or it could be used on top of Windows Home Server, which has a great backup solution already built in, and that would provide the server capability. Although, I think IIS is pulled out of WHS, but it would be possible to install some sort of web server on top of it.

By: Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:48:06 +0000

@Gareth I agree! The iPhone installer process isn’t too dissimilar to apt-get, for example, except it happens with a click or two and you get a pretty progress bar instead of a whole bunch of text.

The technology is almost all there; it’s just a case of wrapping it up with end users in mind.

By: Gareth Francis

Gareth Francis — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:54:16 +0000

Actually, what you describe sounds a lot like how setting up a basic virtual server is now (when it all works), except with a bunch of restrictions (so that it nearly always works), and some (more) web ui magic to make it more seamless and get rid of the sysadminy bits. Plus, of course, the content in the form of the nicely packaged and ready to go applications.

The underlying technology is all there already – it just needs putting together.

By: Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:54:28 +0000

@Andrew: I take your point, and was actually thinking that even just an intuitive install system (everything else aside) would be a massive improvement on the current situation. I might even consider starting the open source project myself. Maybe.

By: Andrew Ducker

Andrew Ducker — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:40:38 +0000

Assuming there hasn’t been a security breach, or you haven’t explicitly provided access to your data over a network or through a direct action like emailing it, it’s safe.
Or a crash, or a hard drive failure, or accidentally deleting a file you shouldn’t. The vast majority of people don’t perform backups, let alone have any kind of backup strategy. Doesn’t sound terribly safe to me :->

I think that setting standards so that applications/data could be run either individually or by service providers would be great (the Typepad/Movable Type approach) – and hopefully more things will be commodified as we go along.

Now, we just need to get someone to produce an intuitive, simple system that requires no configuration and release it as open source!

By: David Maddison

David Maddison — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:42:56 +0000

As I was reading this I was also started thinking that it’s describing (to some extent) Opera Unite.

Obviously the technology services can be built in is a little limited although (warning:plug comming up!) I’ve built gwt-unite (gwt-unite.googlecode.com) which allows you to build Opera Unite applications using Java.

By: Matt Leifer

Matt Leifer — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:35:37 +0000

This sounds like a very good idea. I would be interested to know how easy it would be to build a platform like this on Opera Unite. I haven’t looked into it much myself, but it looks like they have got the easy to install web server part of the platform.